Opposable Thumbs —

At E3, Microsoft is all about games, games, and, oh, how about some games?

Overall message from Xbox's Phil Spencer was "We're making Xbox for you."

David Eckelberry from Lionshead next showed off Fable Legends, and much ado was made over the game's social and multiplayer aspects. In the demo, four players quickly grouped together and launched a quest to recover a magic item from somewhere. The characters quipped non-stop as they were attacked, swinging swords and casting items and launching ranged attacks. Taking a page from Dungeon Keeper, though, players are also allowed to play as "the villain." Players assuming this role gain an overhead view of the combat area, setting traps and sending monsters out to attack the players.

Fable Legends.

We were given quick previews of Project Spark (a collaborative creation game where players can build and then adventure in different environments) and Ori and the Blind Forest (a beautiful side-scrolling platformer), and then a softly echoing male choir sounded out the opening strains of, you guessed it, Halo.

You know who this is.

Further Reading

Bonnie Ross from 343 industries took the stage to announce the Master Chief Collection, which contains every previous Halo game, all wrapped in a single, unified interface and with all gameplay elements unlocked. The game will also feature "playlists," which will let you play specific areas of each game. Halo 2 has also received a significant amount of untouching—however, because of how beloved the game is, the multiplayer will be available in its original form. On top of that, a number of Halo 2 maps have been updated to take full advantage of the Xbox One’s capabilities. All told, there will be more than 100 multiplayer maps, in their original engines, in 1080p in 60 FPS, with dedicated server support.

Additionally, Ross announced the Halo 5 Guardians beta in December, which will bring "new game modes and features." The video trailer showed about 10 seconds of cutscene running and jumping and shooting, though it, too, banged the "60fps and dedicated servers" drum. Access to the beta will be included in the Master Chief Collection.

Far

Phil Spencer came back on and reminded everyone that these were just highlights of games arriving by the 2014 holiday season, and that many more games were in the near-term pipeline. After that, though, he turned the audience's attention to 2015 and beyond.

We saw Inside, a gloomy dystopian platformer from Playdead that appeared to borrow some visual and gameplay elements from Limbo. Following that, we saw previews for at least a dozen indie games, presented by ID @ Xbox representative Chris Chala.

Then, a "world premiere" game—Rise of the Tomb Raider. The trailer alternates between a hooded Lara Croft in a therapist's office being chided for not taking care of herself and a much more familiarly garbed and smudge-faced Croft leaping and running and shooting. "We become who we're meant to be," she says as the trailer closes.

Lara Croft returns.

Creative Director Ken Lobb came out to show a teaser for a cult classic game he was rebooting. We were hopeful that he was going to announce a redone Battletoads, but it wasn't to be. We saw cinematic footage of two people dueling with magic amidst a ruined city, and then the title flashed up: Phantom Dust. Not a big game among the Ars crew, unfortunately.

Phantom Dust—not a title most of the Ars daytime crew was that familiar with.

Ryan Barnard, from Massive Games, then came out to talk about The Division, originally announced at last year’s E3, and we saw new gameplay of the players running through an abandoned subway station on the way to an objective. They met up with another player and got caught in a firefight, then effectively communicated their way through it using clear radio discipline and without a single instance of anyone using homophobic slurs. Clearly this isn’t intended to be actually representative of how the game will work after release.

Hideki Kamiya of Platinumgames then told us to "prepare to see action on a whole new scale" before showing a beautiful cutscene featuring a character running through woods, pursued by giant monsters. He was saved by a dragon and then incongruously slapped on some headphones, pulled out a sword, and started hacking up monsters. This is Scalebound, which appears to feature players fighting alongside their pet dragons.

Pet dragons!

The last game we saw was introduced by David Jones, cofounder and creative director for CloudGine. We didn't get a title at first, but as the camera swooped through a cel-shaded neon-lit cityscape, and we saw players running, shooting, driving, and blowing things up with bombs, the art and cel-shading gave it away: this was Crackdown, which is being designed by original Crackdown creator Ted Jones. David Jones explained that the game will offer an open-world, fully co-op experience, powered by "an army" of dedicated servers.

This guy doesn't make it past the cinematic.

And that was it for the event. Spencer came back to close things out. Notably absent from the demo reel was anything about Battlefield Hardline, although Spencer mentioned it in his closing speech—we're not sure if it was an accidental slip, or if the title is still on track.

Unlike last year's E3, though, Microsoft didn't leave audiences gnashing their teeth over an apparent lack of focus: after seeing 90 minutes of games, the messaging was clear. Spencer emphasized this with his closing words: "We’ll continue to listen to your feedback and we’ll continue to make Xbox for you."

Lee Hutchinson
Lee is the Senior Technology Editor at Ars and oversees gadget, automotive, IT, and culture content. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX. Emaillee.hutchinson@arstechnica.com//Twitter@Lee_Ars